


A Simple Matter of Clockwork

by DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered



Series: Several General Danvers AUs in Tiny Hors D'oeuvre Form [10]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Steampunk, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-26 01:10:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20035375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered/pseuds/DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered
Summary: I've been threatening to write a little steampunk, so I wrote a little steampunk.





	A Simple Matter of Clockwork

Raising the dead was only a simple matter of clockwork.

Well, technically, it wouldn’t really be raising the dead.

Alexandra peered through her googles at the contraption she’d spent months building underneath the streets of London; she’d needed to do it here on account of all the water that flowed through the sewer system. One couldn’t play havoc with opening doors to the past without a bloody lot of steam power and she supposed people would ask questions if she’d set up shop at the mill.

Her handwriting scratched thin and spidery across the paper of her journal, the shadow of her pen whipping across the page in the flickering yellow light of the gas lamp. She had adjusted her calculations several times now. If it didn’t work this time, she wasn’t quite sure what she’d do.

She shoveled coal into the squat iron stove, sneezing as the coal dust particles found their way up her nose. She wiped her hands on her father’s old trousers –all she had left of him now– and readied herself to run the clockwork one more time.

Technically, it wouldn’t be raising the dead. It would just be pulling the dead out of the past from a time when they were still alive.

She had the Colonel’s old pistol, which she had managed to light-fingeredly lift from the corpse after they’d fought, and two farthings from the Colonel’s pocket which she had declared lucky on one occasion.

She lit the stove and closed it as the orange flames leapt out of the spaces in the front grate. She pumped the bellows until the entire apparatus seemed to glow with the heat and the coals nearly turned white. Then she splashed across the tunnel and threw open the valve which would send a torrent of London’s finest sewer water through her apparatus to be heated to incredible temperatures and set her machine spinning.

The pipes steamed and groaned.

The two concentric iron circles, large enough for a grown adult to stand inside of, spun madly until they were little more than a blur. Sparks flew from the hinges at the top and bottom of the rigging. She clenched her leather-gloved hands and waited, needing to squint even with the goggles on. The heat and light coming off of the machine was becoming almost too much to bear. She stumbled back a little, one hand raised as if the force of her will was the only thing keeping the apparatus from exploding.

She swore under her breath and ran back toward the valve to throw it the other way. If she let it go any more, she was sure it would kill her. Her splashing footsteps crossed the cavernous tunnel and she wrapped her hands around the giant wooden lever.

The machine threw a sudden sheet of blazing white light, that felt as though it was searing right through her. She pulled down on the lever and felt the valve drop back into place.And then the machine breathed out a long sigh, and all the crackling electricity and steam in the air began to slowly settle down.

Panting, she leaned against the cold, damp bricks. She looked down and realized that her waistcoat was half-singed off her and that the cuffs of her shirt were gone entirely. Up to the elbows, actually. Her cheeks were flushed and felt sunburnt.

She looked over at the machine. It was slowing. The two large rings were about to stop. And inside of them, much to Alex’s disbelief, stood a figure.

Licking her painfully dry lips, Alex splashed back across the tunnel and hurried over to the machine. There she was, alright. Colonel Astra Inze, of the Women’s Auxiliary, wearing an eye patch and a very jaunty black dress and women’s waistcoat, hands planted on her hips, looking quite a bit younger than the last time Alex had seen her. She demanded: “Who the devil are you? What the devil is this? Where the devil am I? And why the devil are you burnt to a bloody crisp?”

Alex’s heart raced. “I’m Alexandra Danvers, Colonel. I’m afraid, ah, you don’t know me yet, although you may be familiar with me in my younger years as Our Little Lady of the War Effort.” Alex drew herself up proudly and pulled off her goggles.

When the Crown had decided to promote its war, some twenty years ago now, they’d chosen little Alexandra Danvers as their model for the recruitment and morale posters. Londoners had never been so plucky. Alexandra, however, did not feel particularly plucky at present.

The Colonel squinted her one aquamarine eye at her. “You’re too bloody old to be her,” she determined after a moment.

Alex cleared her throat. “Ah, yes, well. You see, that’s the thing, Colonel. It’s… I’ve brought you a good twenty years hence, so…” She raised her hands in a weak flourish. “Surprise?”

The Colonel was still unconvinced and unimpressed. “And how exactly have you done that?”

Alex gestured at the machine. “With that, you see. My father was a scientist, and I… I’ve been working with his research.”

The Colonel paused, knocked on the machine with a hard fist. She looked askance at Alexandra’s trousers. “And women wear trousers now, twenty years hence, do they?”

Alex chuckled. “Well, er, not really. Mainly just me. And just when I’m working on…” She gestured at the machine, which was still steaming, but marvelously, somehow intact. “…this.”

“I’ll have you know I was conducting a very important meeting of the ladies’ auxiliary when you so rudely plucked me out and brought me here.” The Colonel was not amused.

Alex sighed. “Well, you see… I’m trying to…” She frowned. How to explain? “Something happened to you, Colonel, and… or rather, it will happen, as far as you’re concerned. But something happens to you, and it’s awful, and I thought I might, ah, sidestep the whole thing if I were to just… pop you right out of the past and bring you here, sort of… escort you round the other side of it?”

The Colonel considered her for a moment, now intrigued. “Now, for a moment, we’ll suppose I believe all of this. Why would you do such a thing? Who are we to one another? Perhaps you’re an enemy of the state, trying to deprive the Ladies’ Auxiliary of their best leadership.”

Alex squirmed. “I’m… well, I’m not an enemy, no. I, er…” She didn’t want to explain. “I grew up with your niece, and I owe her a debt, and I thought I might just…”

The Colonel snorted. “Deprive me of the opportunity to live my life and fight my battles?”

Alex sighed, grumbling, “I suppose I should have expected this. I never could bloody talk to you. Like arguing with a–”

“A stone wall, yes, I’ve been told that.” She came closer to Alex, inspecting her. “What exactly is your relationship to my niece?”

Alex sighed. She pulled up two wooden stools from her workbench and sat heavily in one of them. From under the table, she pulled a tin flask. “Whiskey, madam Colonel?”

“If it’s decent.”

“Bushmills.”

“That will do.”

**Two hours and half the flask later:**

“Alexandra is your name?”

“Yes.”

“And you bloody shot me.”

“In my defense I wasn’t trying to kill you. I just was… trying to stop you killing anyone else, Colonel.”

The Colonel stared at her with her one very serious eye. “If you and I are such intimate relations that you have killed me and brought me back to life, I suppose you must call me Astra.”

“I’m… sorry?”

“The taking of a life is quite an intimate thing,” she insisted.

“Astra, then.”

“So, was I right, though?”

“Sorry?”

“About the new factories poisoning the water supplies?”

Alex sighed. “By all accounts, it appears you were.”

“Very well, then.” Astra stood, spent a moment weaving, knocked over a small model clock on the table, nearly knocked over the gas lamp, and then declared, “You shall take me to my niece, now, Alexandra.”

“You’re not in very good condition,” Alex objected. “She’s not seen you in nearly two years, and she thinks you’re dead! You don’t want to turn up on her doorstep drunk as a boiled owl.”

Astra paused. “I suppose not,” she agreed. She unsteadily returned herself to the seat. “I’m not drunk as a boiled owl.”

“You’re not exactly sober as a judge, either, Astra.”

“Don’t talk to me about judges,” Astra sighed. She leaned forward then, her eye twinkling with sudden curiosity. “Was it a ripping good fight, then?”

Alex, who was sipping at the flask, stopped and almost spat out her mouthful of drink. “What?”

“Was it a ripping good fight? You didn’t just sneak up on me like some French tart and shoot me in the back, did you?”

Alex first frowned, then smiled. “I suppose it was. You’re a difficult woman to pursue, and it still remains a mystery to me how you managed to give me such a difficult chase over the rooftops of London while in such high-heeled boots.”

“I am a lady,” Astra responded, “and a lady can make haste no matter how unhospitable her shoes might be.”Astra took the flask from her and drank again. “And you? In trousers, then?”

Alex nodded. “I was.”

“Hm,” was all Astra said in response. “Was it fisticuffs?”

“For a bit.” And then a heaviness came over Alex. “You know, the fact that you’re here, now… it doesn’t change anything for me. I begged you not to ignite the factory, and I’ve hated myself for years after I shot you. I still do. The fact that now you’re here, it… doesn’t change the fact of what I did and… I don’t feel better.”

Astra smirked. “This really wasn’t a debt to my niece. It was to ease your own guilt.”

Alex drank again. “Yes, partly. I… so admired you, you know. Found you so impressive, so strong, and… I would have liked to know you a bit better, had time and circumstance allowed it.”Her fingers were a little bit numb, and she fumbled with the singed ends of her sleeves.

Astra slid her stool a few inches closer and placed a hand on the side of her face. “You’ve a lot of salt, Miss Danvers,” she said gently. “Gumption. I’ve always appreciated that.”

Alex’s heart stumbled. Was Astra looking at her so softly because…? No. She swallowed once. “I’m just trying to do what’s right.”

“Of course you are,” Astra murmured, gazing at her and inching her face closer. “Our little lady of the war effort.”

Alex’s breath hitched and she staid very still, wondering if what she thought was happening was indeed happening. Astra’s touch was soft, but electric, and Alex could feel its presence like a vibrating current. “Colonel…” she whispered.

She closed her eyes.

There came a crackling sound, like a massive electrical shock, and she felt the skin of her cheek suddenly sting and burn.She gasped in pain and opened her eyes in time to see Astra engulfed in a web of lightning fingers, before she disappeared into nothing.

She cursed. She knew Astra hadn’t been destroyed, but it was obvious: her presence here had been unnatural and the universe would restore things to their proper order unless they were artificially sustained.

She touched the burn on her cheek. She would have a scar where Astra touched her. She would poke and press at it all day and all night as she reworked the equations to make the Colonel's next stay last just a bit longer.


End file.
